Crisis In Iran – Indiana Faculty Weighs In

"Religious leaders should return to the more traditional role of offering advice to secular administrators," Jamsheed Choksy says.

Last Saturday, a panel of Indiana University scholars gave a talk to help people understand what is currently happening in Iran and those events’ historical significance. Here are some of the highlights of the day:

Shahyar Daneshgar: Cross-Cultural Sympathy

Shahyar Daneshgar is a professor of Persian Literature and a senior lecturer in the department of Central Eurasian Studies.

He respectfully begins the session with a moment of silence, not only for those who have fallen during Iran’s recent unrest, but for the loved ones of those who have died. Daneshgar then plays part of song by an Iranian musician dedicated to the victims of 9/11. The professor reminds the audience that when the towers fell in New York, Iran’s citizens chose to display their sympathy even in the face of opposition.

“Despite the fact that the Iranian government was really putting pressure on the people,” Daneshgar says, “we had thousands of young people and people on the streets of Tehran holding candle vigils [sic] expressing their sorrow and support for the American people.”

Jamsheed Choksy: Schisms In The Clergy

Jamsheed Choksy is a professor in both the Central Eurasian Studies and Religious Studies departments at Indiana University. This year, he was appointed to the council of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Choksy remarks that the supposed election fraud was “only the spark for the unrest” the world is observing in Iran. He points to “mounting rejection of the theocratic government”, which is exacerbated by “a population growing in number, housing shortages, chronic unemployment, and rising inflation.”

“Many popular Shiite clerics have become weary of their roles in national politics, and they suggest instead that religious leaders should return to the more traditional role of offering advice to secular administrators until, in their opinion, the twelfth imam, Mahdi the Savior comes to create a religious state,” Choksy says.

He concludes by giving to examples of the impotence of the current hard-liner approach in Iran. When the election was called in favor of Ahmadinejad, 180 out of 290 parliamentary members “skipped town” to avoid congratulating the president on his recent win. But unlike other countries, Iran’s parliamentary members are pre-screened before taking office to ensure that each one toes the line of the administration. Even those who were confirmed Ahmadinejad supporters seem to be going astray.

The other example, Choksy says, is the “increasing inability of the Supreme Leader and the president to force other clerics, to other leading ayatollahs, to toe the official line.” So not only can we see a growing discontent in the general population of the religious rulers, but the religious rulers are themselves experiencing major rifts in ideology.

Paul Losensky: Women’s Role In Iranian Politics

Paul Losensky is a professor in the departments of Central Eurasian Studies and Comparative Literature. Losensky was born in the United States, but was able to live in Iran during the presidency of Khatami. He recalls being struck by the gender segregation, even in the university libraries.

“One of the things that was most attractive about Mousavi as a presidential candidate was his wife,” he says.

“While Mousavi has very little charisma — and carried around a lot of baggage as the prime minister of the Iranian government during the 1980’s, which was one of the more serious periods of repression — part of the reason Mousavi became a sort of figure head for a while was because of his wife.” Losensky quotes one of his friends from Iran, himself a devout Muslim, as saying he “would feel much happier voting for her than for him.”

Losensky brings up an expression that Mrs. Mousavi used: “This is a revolution within a revolution.” Although most of the Iranian people he is in contact with do not want to see the bloodshed of another large-scale revolution, Losensky says that there is an impression that they believe the revolution “needs to be truer to the democratic principles that were supposed to be enshrined, at least in part, within the constitution of the original Islamic Republic.”

Abdulkader Sinno: The Demonstrations Must Go On

Abdulkader Sinno is a professor in the the Political Science and Middle Eastern Studies departments, and is a 2009 Carnegie Scholar researching the representation of Muslims in the West.

“I can tell you one thing for sure,” Sinno says, “This revolution within a revolution has no chance of succeeding whatsoever unless the clerical elite becomes divided in a clear way.” He says that the way to ensure that the opposition’s recent demonstrations have the most effect is to draw them out for a long period of time. In doing this, Sinno says, members of the clergy will be forced, over time, to commit to one camp or the other.

Daniel Beben: Democracy Or Diplomacy?

Daniel Beben is a Ph.D. student in Iranian history in the departments of History and Central Eurasian Studies. He has, as he puts it, never had the pleasure of living in Iran. He explained how the U.S.’s public stance on the affairs in Iran are impossibly complex. Do we support the pro-democracy demonstrators and forgo diplomatic nuclear discussions?

“The Obama administration has committed itself to pursuing a diplomatic solution to the nuclear issue in Iran,” Beben says. “In some ways these two issues are very much in conflict with one another. On the one hand, if we wanted to pursue a more diplomatic engagement with Iran, it would be very difficult to do this while at the same time sort of encouraging a revolt from below.”

The panel discussion was concluded by a brief Q&A session with the audience.

Megan Meyer Managing Editor of Muslim Voices, was born in Indiana and grew up in South Dakota before moving to Bloomington in 2007 to earn a B.A. in French literature from IU. Megan was an intern for NPR in the spring of 2009, and joined WFIU the following June.More posts by this author »